Material cases

A material case produces a tileable PBR material: a set of maps painted with the texture and pbr binaries. It declares a [material] table in place of [canvas] or [voxel], and declares no [model]. A case authors one material.

Everything on the Manifests overview applies unchanged.

asset_kind = "material"

# The maps the material carries and how they are baked.
[material]
size = 512                   # square map resolution in pixels, a power of two (required)
tile = true                  # seamless authoring: brushes/gradients/filters wrap across
                             # the map edges so it tiles without a seam (default true)
maps = ["base-color", "normal", "roughness", "metallic", "ao"]
                             # the channels the material emits; "base-color" is REQUIRED,
                             # the rest optional — a subset of: base-color | normal |
                             # roughness | metallic | ao | emissive
background = "transparent"   # preview clear color only

# `binary` names the PRIMARY painter (`texture`); the companion `pbr` binary (bake
# normal/AO, uniforms, assemble, 3D preview) ships in the SAME image and is on PATH.
[tool]
binary  = "texture"
preview = "maps/{map}.png"   # a {map} template — one preview per declared map

# A SINGLE interleaved record (each op carries --map).
[output]
actions = "actions.json"

The material table

[material] fixes the material’s output and is required for, and only for, a material case.

• size is the square map resolution in pixels and must be a power of two greater than zero.
• tile selects seamless authoring, where every brush, gradient, and filter wraps across the map edges. It defaults to true and is required for triplanar application.
• maps lists the channels the material emits. It must be non-empty, must include base-color, must carry no duplicates, and must otherwise draw from normal, roughness, metallic, ao, and emissive. The height channel a case bakes relief from is an authoring aid rather than an emitted map, so it is not declared.
• background is the preview clear color.

Tool and output paths

[tool].binary names the primary painter, texture. The companion pbr binary is baked into the same image and available on PATH.

[tool].preview carries the {map} token, giving one preview per declared map. [output].actions is a single interleaved operation log and must not carry {map}, because the two binaries share one recorded stream.

Core emits one PNG per declared map plus the material.json carrying the map paths, each map’s color space, and the world-space tiling scale. Neither is manifest-declared. See the output contract.